I recently purchased a Lenovo thinkserver TS140 off amazon for ~$220. The power supply it comes with is pretty weak, and it's configuration is weird almost to the point of being bizarre. I had a few thoughts that I was looking for second opinions/options on. Here's the specs of the machine as it stands:
i3 4130
Lenovo TS140 mobo
1x 4GB unbuffered/unregistered ECC 1.35v DIMM (soon to be 2)
MSi 270x gaming, with a slight OC but no voltage alterations.
128GB corsair mx100 SSD I grabbed as a OS drive
Intel pci-express NIC soon to be upgraded to a 2x port intel NIC
And here's the power supply, it's kind of a weird duck: ACbell PCB005 - 280 watt 80 plus bronze, with 16.0A on a 12.0V1 rail and 16.0A on a 12.0Vcpu rail (270 watts total 12v)
My first concern, before buying, was the wattage of the PSU, as the 270x has a TDP of 180 watts. I plugged the system into a kill-a-watt (I know they're not perfectly accurate) and measured the system power during a variety of tests. Idle: 30-35 watts; Prime95: 60-65 watts; 3dmark combined test: 165-180 watts. My second concern is that the PSU only has a single 4 pin out and a lenovo custom 14pin out to the motherboard, The sata power cables then have two 4 pin outputs that are connected to two 3x sata power cables. I get the two 6pin pci-e from 2-to-1 sata-to-pcie cables, with one plugged into each sata cable to balance the load.
My main questions are: is it worth it to get a new power supply? I'd be looking at something gold rated for better efficiency. Considering this thing draws ~30 watts from the wall at idle (where it would be 95% of the time), I can't imagine a gold PSU would do much for me considering the load %. Is the from-motherboard-to-sata-to-pcie configuration considered safe? I felt the cables during 3dmark and they weren't warming up, so I'm assuming the first 90 watts come from the motherboard, and the remaining power would be split between the two sata 4 pin outputs.
i3 4130
Lenovo TS140 mobo
1x 4GB unbuffered/unregistered ECC 1.35v DIMM (soon to be 2)
MSi 270x gaming, with a slight OC but no voltage alterations.
128GB corsair mx100 SSD I grabbed as a OS drive
Intel pci-express NIC soon to be upgraded to a 2x port intel NIC
And here's the power supply, it's kind of a weird duck: ACbell PCB005 - 280 watt 80 plus bronze, with 16.0A on a 12.0V1 rail and 16.0A on a 12.0Vcpu rail (270 watts total 12v)
My first concern, before buying, was the wattage of the PSU, as the 270x has a TDP of 180 watts. I plugged the system into a kill-a-watt (I know they're not perfectly accurate) and measured the system power during a variety of tests. Idle: 30-35 watts; Prime95: 60-65 watts; 3dmark combined test: 165-180 watts. My second concern is that the PSU only has a single 4 pin out and a lenovo custom 14pin out to the motherboard, The sata power cables then have two 4 pin outputs that are connected to two 3x sata power cables. I get the two 6pin pci-e from 2-to-1 sata-to-pcie cables, with one plugged into each sata cable to balance the load.
My main questions are: is it worth it to get a new power supply? I'd be looking at something gold rated for better efficiency. Considering this thing draws ~30 watts from the wall at idle (where it would be 95% of the time), I can't imagine a gold PSU would do much for me considering the load %. Is the from-motherboard-to-sata-to-pcie configuration considered safe? I felt the cables during 3dmark and they weren't warming up, so I'm assuming the first 90 watts come from the motherboard, and the remaining power would be split between the two sata 4 pin outputs.